A judge in Connecticut has upheld the state’s recent removal of religious exemptions to school vaccination requirements, after officials changed the law in response to legal challenges.
Superior Court Judge Edward Krumeich on Sept. 14 dismissed a case brought in 2022 by parents of several children who had challenged Connecticut’s 2021 end to religious exemptions to vaccine requirements for children in schools and daycare.
The Connecticut Supreme Court previously dismissed all but one of the parents’ claims. The state’s top court remanded the case to the Superior Court to consider whether the removal of the exemptions violated the Connecticut Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, which bars state officials from burdening the right to religion unless they are furthering a “compelling governmental interest.”
Krumeich granted a motion to dismiss by state officials who had highlighted how legislators passed, and Gov. Ned Lamont signed in April, a law that amended the religious freedom act to state that it “shall not apply” to school vaccine requirements.
Plaintiffs had urged the court not to throw out the case, arguing that “the defendants and their Democrat cohorts throughout our government have used their overwhelming power in the most despicable manner imaginable by enacting a new law that is designed solely to defeat this lawsuit.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2024 declined to take up a challenge to the law that revoked the religious exemptions.
Connecticut is one of only five states that do not allow any non-medical exemptions to school immunization requirements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
After the judge’s ruling, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong celebrated the development.
“Today’s decision affirms what we have said since day one—Connecticut’s commonsense school vaccine requirements are lifesaving and lawful,” he said.
State Democrats also weighed in.
“This ruling is a win for every Connecticut parent who sends a child to school expecting that classroom to be safe from measles,” Connecticut Senate President Pro Tempore Martin M. Looney and Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff said in a joint statement.
“With 98.2 percent of Connecticut kindergartners vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella in the 2024-25 school year, our state is proof that strong school vaccine requirements work.”
Lindy Urso, a lawyer representing the parents, told The Epoch Times in an email that officials did not defeat the Connecticut Religious Freedom and Restoration Act claim, but fled from it.
“They changed the rules while the contest was underway,” Urso said.
He added later: “There is no triumph in watching the most powerful political actors in Connecticut place the full weight of the government boot upon the necks of families, force those families to fight for years merely to obtain judicial review, and then—when victory is in sight—press the boot down one final time by changing the law. That is not the majesty of the government. It is precisely this type of abuse of government, trampling on individual liberties, that our state and federal constitutions were designed to prevent.”